Action Team Members

Action Team Leads

Ted SchuurDr. Ted Schuur (Action Team Chair) is a Professor of Ecosystem Ecology at Northern Arizona University. His research focuses on the interactions between terrestrial carbon cycling and climate change. In particular, he uses geochemical techniques for measuring natural abundance radiocarbon in ecosystem pools and fluxes to trace the sources of carbon emissions to the atmosphere. One of his major research interests is to understand feedbacks to atmospheric CO2 from warming temperature, thawing permafrost, and changing fire regimes in high latitudes ecosystems. His work on this topic has included over a decade of research in boreal and arctic Alaska and northeastern Siberia. He has participated in national and international meetings, workshops, and panels on the topic of ecology and the environment. He has received new investigator awards from NASA and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for his work on carbon and nutrient cycling in terrestrial ecosystems, and a CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation for research and education centered on the use of radiocarbon in ecology and earth system science. He is a native of Michigan and graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BS from the University of Michigan in 1991. He received a PhD from the University of California-Berkeley in 1999 and held a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in Bioinformatics at the University of California-Irvine before joining the faculty at the University of Florida in 2001. In 2013, The Schuur lab moved to Northern Arizona University to become part of NAU’s newly established Center for Ecosystem Science and Society. Email:Ted.Schuur [at] nau.edu

Christina SchädelDr. Christina Schädel (Action Team Staff Lead) works as a Assistant Research Professor at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, AZ. She is a biogeochemist and plant ecophysiologist with expertise in climate change, ranging from arctic warming impacts on permafrost carbon to plant responses to elevated carbon dioxide. She holds a joint coordination and research position with the Permafrost Carbon Network focusing on the decomposability of permafrost carbon in driving climate change in the 21st century. Prior to moving to Arizona, she worked as a Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Florida and University of Oklahoma working on climate change related issues. She completed her PhD in 2009 at the University of Basel in Switzerland where she investigated the role of carbon stores in plants under elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide. She also hold a master’s degree in Integrative Biology from the University of Basel and spent one year at the University of Vienna in Austria developing a method for hemicellulose extraction. Additionally, Christina enjoys science coordination and outreach, with the goal of raising public awareness of climate change. Email:Christina.Schaedel [at] nau.edu

Erin TrochimDr. Erin Trochim (Action Team Postdoctoral Fellow) currently works with the SEARCH Permafrost Action Team to synthesize information on the impacts of thawing permafrost on infrastructure and ecosystem services. She is based at the Alaska Climate Science Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) and is part of the Scenarios Network for Alaska + Arctic Planning (SNAP) at the International Arctic Research Center (IARC). She received her interdisciplinary PhD from the UAF with a focus on Remote Sensing & Hydrology and was funded by the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship (NESSF) Program to characterize water tracks in headwater drainage basins of the Alaskan Arctic. As part of her doctoral research she also investigated the differences in ET between the water tracks and non water track areas in the Imnvait basin. Email:edtrochim [at] alaska.edu

Action Team Steering Committee

A steering committee was convened in 2015 to assist the Permafrost Action Team's efforts to guide and prioritize research activities. The committee was assembled with input from the SEARCH SSC and includes members from academic institutions, Federal and state agencies, and stakeholders. Current members include:

SEARCH activities are supported by a collaborative grant from the National Science Foundation Division of Polar Programs, Arctic Sciences Section to the International Arctic Research Center (IARC; PLR-1331100 ) and the Arctic Research Consortium of the US (ARCUS; PLR-1331083). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.